Certain medical conditions can cause a patient's airway to become blocked, thereby preventing air from passing to the lungs. A commonly used therapy to treat a blocked airway involves inserting an endotracheal tube into the patient's trachea in order to restore airway patency. The insertion of the endotracheal tube into a patient's trachea is referred to as tracheal intubation.
In a tracheal intubation procedure, the endotracheal tube passes through a patient's mouth, through the larynx, and into the trachea. Once the endotracheal tube passes the larynx, it is difficult to properly align the tube into the trachea, because the inlets of the trachea and the esophagus are very close to each other, and the endotracheal tube is often inadvertently placed into the esophagus. Such misalignment significantly increases operating time and reduces the efficiency of the medical procedure. Such misalignment can also injure a patient by bruising the trachea and the esophagus tissues.
Various methods exist to facilitate the alignment of the endotracheal tube within the trachea. For example, a conventional method used to perform tracheal intubation is by direct laryngoscopy, in which a laryngoscope is used to visualize the patient's airway. In direct laryngoscopy, the laryngoscope is initially inserted into a patient's mouth. The patient's neck is then extended so that the inlet of the trachea can be visualized in order to facilitate the subsequent insertion of the endotracheal tube. Although direct laryngoscopy may be the most commonly used intubation technique, this method is cumbersome and poses a serious risk to patients that have neck injury.